FCC gives phone companies deadline for anti-spoofing measures

WASHINGTON, D.C. (CNN) – Ever get a call from a local area code, and you answer it, only to find it’s actually a robocall? It’s called spoofing, in which a local phone number is fraudulently imitated. It’s an illegal trick to get you to answer the call. And it’s super annoying.

Now, the Federal Communications Commission has set a date for phone companies to put anti-spoofing technology in place: June 30th, 2021.

The technology requires carriers to verify phone numbers are real and to block illegal robocalls.

The FCC estimates scam robocalls cost more than $3 billion a year in wasted time.

And for those who fall for them, the scams cost Americans about $10 billion a year.

In case you were wondering, the protocol is called “STIR/SHAKEN.” It stands for “Secure Telephony Identity Revisited/Secure Handling of Asserted information using toKENs.” It’s a verification system that essentially assigns a certificate of verification for each phone.